


serious pleasures

by viviandarkbloom



Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 20:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13279254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viviandarkbloom/pseuds/viviandarkbloom
Summary: Another tumblr prompt:number 5 from this list.Thanks to mazily for the prompt.Slightly AU-ish.





	serious pleasures

“You’re not serious,” Caroline says.  

Playfully Gillian scrunches her face, as if truly contemplating the matter at hand. “Hmm. No. Yeah. I am,” she replies, and kisses Caroline again. 

An intense bout of snogging continues unabated for a couple minutes before Caroline finally discovers the wherewithal to pursue her point by decisively removing her tongue from Gillian’s mouth. “I know you’re a little attracted to me—”

This time Gillian can barely restrain her amusement. “You’re kidding, right?”

Caroline admits to herself that she is, metaphorically speaking, on precarious ground and in reality on no ground whatsoever: Perched on Gillian’s dining table with her skirt hiked up well past a socially appropriate boundary and her legs wrapped around Gillian’s denimed waist, all while Gillian’s busy hands frantically sample the bounty of her body, unable to settle on pulling at her stockings or tearing off her panties or caressing her thighs or cradling her ass. She appears to be nothing more than a giant candy store and Gillian a manic, deprived Oliver Twist set loose upon her. Thoughts of Dickensian street urchins are a mood killer and she contemplates mentioning the comparison aloud in order to bring a halt to this madness, but Gillian might interpret that as a prompt for Cockney role-play and then things would get truly out of hand.

She tries condescension, which scarcely seems a better approach. “Okay, but maybe this isn’t a good idea—you don’t always come up with good ideas—”

The painfully obvious statement is momentarily disregarded because Gillian seems to be once again caught in the magical, perpetual discovery and rediscovery of breasts not her own so tantalizingly within reach, and as such any opportunity to get Caroline’s blouse off is Christmas morning. “Oh, wow.”  

“Jesus, you act as if you’ve never encountered tits before.”

“Not like these. They’re the Châteauneuf-du-Pape of tits, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

A cog on the infernal wheel of resistance slips. “Well, if you insist—”

“I do. Anyway,” Gillian continues as she expertly unbuttons Caroline’s shirt with one hand and Caroline reconciles herself with the dread indignity of motorboating in her imminent future, “like I’ve always said, I’m more a woman of action, not ideas.”

“You’re married—” Caroline says feebly, because she knows Gillian believes in marriage with as much pseudo-sanctity as a conservative Christian; it’s all fine and lovely and proper and right until you want to get laid elsewhere.  

“He’s back with Cheryl now, you know that.”

“—I’m married—”

“You’ve got divorce papers on your desk,” Gillian sighs, “and your wife has a new girlfriend already.” Kate’s girlfriend is a doctor who is ten years younger, two stone lighter, and owns a vacation home in Belize. She also speaks four languages and does the occasional stint with Doctors Without Borders, so the level of sheer perfection there is truly unassailable.

“You have to fucking remind me,” Caroline manages to spit out, desperately hoping that indignation will deter her increasingly rhythmic grinding against Gillian’s jeans.  

Gillian cuts her down with a _no-bullshit_ glare. “Kate is too good for the likes of you and you know it. You’ve said as much.” Naturally Kate was more kind and perceptive regarding the problems at the heart of their marriage: _You idealize me, and it doesn’t work. For either of us._

“So I deserve stroppy, brain-dead trailer trash then?” Caroline retorts.

Accustomed to random cruelty and, as Caroline guiltily knows, a survivor of far worse than she has ever doled out, Gillian remains steely-eyed. “You deserve to be well-fucked by stroppy, brain-dead trailer trash—and I’ve every intention of doing that if you’d kindly shut the fuck up and let me get on with it, thank you very much!”

Indeed, Caroline would like to get on with it; at least certain body parts would. But the problematic truth taking up primary residence in her heart and maintaining a troubling pied-á-terre in her head is that she does not believe she deserves Gillian any more or less than she did Kate. Or anyone else for that matter, regardless of intents and purposes. Even John is a dubious prospect now; recently she hit him with a copy of his own novel, which is perhaps the gravest insult one could heap upon a mediocre writer who believes his own words more than anything else. Still, nothing has prepared her for complete self-abnegation; the wanting is forever present and not to be denied, the wanting is the thing.

Ever since mutual admission of the attraction between them—thank you, two bottles of zinfandel—Gillian has been in ravenous pursuit, and two fierce make-out sessions between them led to an impressive array of amorous injuries: violet-smeared hickeys, blossoming bruises, popped buttons, bent bra hooks, and a bloodied lip resulting from Gillian getting startled by a backfiring car and where later Caroline barely convinced everyone that she had been stung on the lip by a wasp. While it has proven wonders for her self-esteem, she wonders if she would actually survive the considerable rigors of making love with Gillian Greenwood.

And yet—as Gillian starts kissing her again and Christ in heaven she is an amazing kisser—Caroline knows that desire will always remain, for her, inextricably bound up in the substance of love, in the warp and woof of a relationship, and if she cannot stop this from happening at least she can sound fair warning, a salient and pointed reminder that like a car crash on the M62 she is an emotional wreck, an unavoidable bloody mess that hopelessly ensnares even the most innocuous of passersby.

“But,” she says breathlessly, “I want—I want—” and the anguish that breaks her voice makes Gillian stop everything.

The breakneck speed of Gillian’s transition from energetic arousal to attentive stillness is disorientating and comforting; the intensity her of gaze remains a sublime constant, a fixed constellation that tells you nothing but where you are. “Tell me what you want,” she says softly.  

Then Caroline admits it: “Something real. Something serious.”

Gillian regards her with another clear-cut diamantine glance of inscrutability and she thinks it’s done now, that Gillian will pull away and she will stand up and smooth down her skirt and all will revert to the way it was or not, because there is seriousness and there is pleasure and never the twain shall meet, at least not for them.  

Hesitantly Gillian kisses her, far more gently than ever before and holds it—a fluttering beat of energy like a moth glowing and cupped in a penumbra of light—as her hand carefully slides up Caroline’s back and under her blouse. With a finger Gillian delicately sketches a circle against her skin and Caroline is so shocked at the consummate tenderness of the gesture and the perfection of the circle indelibly marked on her skin, so flawless she sees clearly it in her mind, that her breathing staggers into a gasp.

Gillian mirrors the fullness of the circle with her mouth, as her tongue races lightly around Caroline’s lips, as she whispers the words that will truly begin everything between them: “So do I.”


End file.
